TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Evening Star, Issue 20061, 29 December 1928, Page 13

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

[Published, by Arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.] “ Alcohol is the one evil genius, whether in wine, or ale, or whisky, and is killing the race of men. It is a racial poison.”—Dr Willard Parker. ALCOHOL AND THE NATIONAL LIFE. Lady Victor Horsley, in an address delivered before the United Kingdom Baud of Hope Union, said:— Speaking us I am to temperance workers, I cannot pretend to offer to you new facts, but I would venture to put before you some thoughts set going in my mind by groat temperance meetings. They were most instructive and helpful, and if any criticism might be uttered at all it would only be that it was an embarass de richessos. The results left upon my mind were partly admiration of the patriotism and energy of the workers, and partly regret at the widespread opposition with which their efforts for the common good were met hy the general public. The reason for that is that they really do not grasp either our attitude to the alcohol question or our aim.. For instance, in the House of Commons the other day Sir Gordon Howart spoke of the temperance people as regarding the taking of a single glass of beer as a sin. That is an entire misconception of the temperance position, based, as it is, on the exact facts of science and corroborative experience of everyday life. We regard the taking of a single glass of beer not as in itself a sin, but as the bad blunder that leads to the taking of all those other glasses of beer which, while the war was going on, stopped the output of munitions to such an extent as nearly to frighten the nation into sobriety, and which are to-day among the principal causes of our poverty and inefficiency. As to our aim, it is simplicity itself. All wo want is that every individual should be as free to act in mind and in body as Nature means them to bo when she sends them into the world. They must bo undnigged, alcohol free. Now, I think we are all agreed that one of the commonest and most unsatisfactory effects nf civilisation is the practice of “faking” or adulterating raw materials and goods of all kinds. Yon believe yourself to have bought a raw material of some sort, but it has already been tampered with before it comes into your bands. It is the same with all kinds of furniture, goods intended, perhaps, to stand heat and weight collapsing on exposure to cither. The dyes of this country, so dear to the Government, have an unfortunate ‘and almost spectral habit of vanishing. As for material'}, pre-war cloth is whole and sound now, while the cloth of today simply “goes.” Our stocking simply melt as we put them on; in fact, they have ail been sophisticated—they are “ shoddy.” If. however, it is bad to have to deal with shoddy goods and shoddy clothes, how infinitely worst it is when we come to shoddy human beings—human beings whose minds and bodies have been so adulterated by alcohol that they are unable to cope with the national emergencies as they arise, or to prevent them by foresight. THE MENTALLY UNFIT. We cannot do with a, people unfit for a good day’s work, either indoor or out; we cannot do with a people a prey to the thousand illnesses of great communities because their natural resistance to disease has been artiflicially lowered. We can’t relp on them; they are “shoddy.” And so with our leaders, our administrators, our judges, our statesmen. It is vital that they should have all their mental faculties, imagination, judgment, and self-control, at their best and freest, to use in the service of the nation. They are paid hy the people; it is the people's duo. But do we get it?

We must get rid of this perpetual source of danger and inefficiency. Wo must get tim whole people to understand the nature and the powers of this drug. To do this wc must use all our efforts to make education in this subject adequate and universal. The upgrowing generation must he taught the enormous importance to physical health of rightly-chosen food and the outstanding fact that a great part of the weakness, apathy, listlessness, and poor condition which lower production and demand hospitals and infirmaries to endeavour to , remedy them arise largely, not so much from insufficient food as from wrong food; equally they will learn the immense importance of alcohol upon the brain, body, and social life. Right eating and right drinking arc the physical basis of right thinking and right acting; yet to-day these facts are misunderstood, and, even if they were appreciated, with the amount we are now •spending upon alcohol, proper nourishment for the people is economically impossible. No young person should ho started out in life without being made acquainted with those facts and with the nature and effects of alcohol and its bearing upon them. No private trade interests should bo allowed to have anything to say in the matter. This piece is the children’s piece. They alone should be allowed to occupy the stage. Neither the basso ’of the brewer nor the whisper from the prompter’s box of the distiller should be permitted in the House; the voices of the children and their urgent needs are the only tilings that should secure a hearing. We have a drink bill of nearly £300,000,000, and we have at this moment an appalling amount of misery and privation in child life. The children know but too well, that they Jack food and fire and bedding and decent shelter; they see their parents squandering in the public house the money that goes to make the trade grossly rich and them miserably poor, but they don’t know what the lure is that makes their parents forget all natural affection and sense of 1 duty, nor do they guess the miracle which is necessary to rescue them and all such other unfortunates once the alcohol craving has got hold. Once more they ought to know it is their right. If it be true, as I have just been told that this teaching is being held back in some of our educational centres, if the power of the liquor trade upon educational authorities is making them swerve from their duty; then I think we ought to go at once to the authorities, put the case before them, and secure redress. In so serious a. matter I do not think that they will deny us. It was recently asked mo in a hasty talk while pressing into a meeting, so that there was no time to discuss the subject at length, “ Where will you find a single man of first-class ability who was or is also a total abstainer?” “Abraham Lincoln,” 1 said, and questioner said, “Thank you; I’m satisfied.” Abraham Lincoln was not only a total abstaner: he was inspired by the desire 'to root,out evils where he saw them, and to make men free. Ho determined to “ down ” slavery, and he did it; but ho did not in purpose rest there. On the day of his death he announced his intention of overthrowing next the slavery of alcohol, and had ho lived his great country would have won their victory a generation earlier. But let us imagine that he had first directed his energies on the alcohol evil, then wo are sure

that, driven by the love of humanity that prompted all his actions, the traffic in slavery would have found in him its immediate and keenest opponent. This is the example which must animate our forces, and along these lines perhaps—the effective desire to give ourselves to the community as a whole —our best hopes for tho future lie.* ■